


A Blush of Love

by marmvg



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 13:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7317151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmvg/pseuds/marmvg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This isn’t the first time that his heart has skipped and plummeted and swelled and ached with raw emotion; that he swore he would burst at the seams with how much his feelings fill him up.</p><p>And it’s not the first time Bellamy has felt that way because of Clarke. For Clarke. He can’t tell you when it began though either, or when he realized it for what it is. Sometimes he wonders if he’s loved her all along."</p><p>Here’s to the rip-roaring quiet kind of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Blush of Love

This isn’t the first time. 

Bellamy has been in love before.

In love with the myths his mother told him before bed; with the guard jacket he wore as a cadet and the hope for a brighter future; with the few minutes of pure light radiating from his sister while she danced among the stars.

This isn’t the first time that his heart has skipped and plummeted and swelled and ached with raw emotion; that he swore he would burst at the seams with how much his feelings fill him up.

And it’s not the first time Bellamy has felt that way because of Clarke.  _For_ Clarke. He can’t tell you when it began though either, or when he realized it for what it is. Sometimes he wonders if he’s loved her all along.

Though he supposes it doesn’t matter when they’re saying their goodbyes outside the gates of Arkadia, preparing to lead separate teams across the ground to shut down nuclear power plants. If everything goes according to plan, their paths will cross again in two months, and they can carry out the rest of their mission together. 

But when has Earth ever adhered to their plans?

As far as Bellamy knows, this is the last time he’ll ever see Clarke again. This is the last time he can tell her how he feels.

And he can’t do it.

He can only stare into her eyes with his own desperate ones, hoping they convey all the things he wants to say; that she needs to know but isn’t ready to hear yet, which is this:

Bellamy loves Clarke. He loves her in a way he can’t fully comprehend himself. With the way she cares with such fire it almost seems cold. When the sun beams down and her hair shines more like an angel’s halo than a princess’s crown. For the way she speaks to his head and makes his heart sing. In a way that leaves him feeling open, raw, a mess of a man, and strong, sure, completely himself all at once. He would kill for her. He would die for her. Bellamy would live forever for Clarke Griffin.

In the back of his mind, it scares him to realize he never felt half that much for his guard jacket.

Clarke stares right back at Bellamy. Tears brim her eyes, glazing over the blue, threatening to overflow and spill down her face. She tries her damnedest to remain stoic, professional, but Bellamy knows Clarke loves him too, even if it’s not the same way. There’s no point in pretending that all they are is business partners anymore.

“May we meet again,” Bellamy says. The words are weighed with emotion. They sound pathetic nonetheless.

Clarke sighs. Her face shutters, and finally she drops the facade. “We will,” she assures him. Bellamy isn’t surprised when she grabs his hand, links their calloused fingers together. His breath still catches in his throat. “Two months,” she reminds him.

Bellamy snorts. The sound tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Right,” he says. “Two months. If the nuclear apocalypse doesn’t kill us first.”

“It won’t, Bellamy.” Clarke pulls on his hand, drawing him closer. “You know it won’t.”

He doesn’t. But hearing her say it gives him more hope than he thought he could muster.

Some feet away, a person shouts “Griffin!” and Bellamy and Clarke know their time is up.

He wants to tell her. 

He doesn’t.

“Be careful, Clarke,” he says instead. “You’re a lousy shot.”

Her lip quivers, just the slightest, and then she throws herself into his arms. Bellamy doesn’t hesitate to wrap himself around her.

“You know I’m not,” she mumbles against his neck. “I learned from you.”

They stay like that, clinging together, until someone else yells “Blake!” and they’re forced to break apart.

“Two months,” says Bellamy.

“Two months,” Clarke repeats.

And then she turns on her heel, ever ready to save them all.

* * *

 

 

Clarke’s team lost radio contact with the others less than two days out of Arkadia, so she can’t be sure how well the rest are doing shutting down reactors. Her group, however, has been successful so far. Of course, there have been notable mishaps, as was expected, and lives  _have_ been lost, but miraculously, all is still going according to plan.

Clarke is proud of her team. She’s even the tiniest bit proud of herself for getting them this far. But she feels bad for feeling good. The world is still ending and people are still dying and most times it feels like it’s all her fault.

Plus, she hasn’t heard from half of her friends in weeks. More specifically, she hasn’t heard from  _Bellamy_ in weeks. But it’s only been a month and twenty nine days. She’ll see him soon, if all works out. And it  _will_ work out, she tells herself. She can’t afford to think any other way.

Just the thought of having Bellamy by her side again sends excitement coursing through Clarke’s veins and anxiousness bubbling beneath her skin. She’s felt his absence more keenly than she ever has before. It’s glaringly obvious when she turns to ask someone for their input, or when a threat presents itself to her caravan and she can’t help but hope he’s on guard, or when they’re sitting around a fire at night, having as pleasant of a time as they can in the face of destruction, and Clarke can’t share it with the person she wants to the most.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, but Clarke doesn’t think she can be any fonder of Bellamy than she has been since who knows when. No, the way she feels for Bellamy has been something else for a while now. A frantic need to keep him safe, an urgency to help him fight; the shattering of her heart when she broke his; the swoop of her stomach when they touch, and the catch of her breath when she sees her feelings reflected in his eyes. It’s something Clarke refused to acknowledge until A.L.I.E. threatened to take it away from her.

To herself at least, Clarke can admit she’s in love with Bellamy Blake. She can’t tell you when it began or how, but she can list a million reasons why. In the end, it all boils down to this: he sees her soul, dark and tainted and drenched in horror, and he accepts it, wholly, and shows her the light in it she can’t see on her own.

One day, she reminds herself. One more day and they’ll be together again.

The walkie-talkie strapped to Clarke’s hip crackles with static, startling her and the rest of the team around her. A voice struggles to break through, jumping in and out, halting abruptly. It’s totally incoherent but it’s  _there_. Someone is trying to make contact with them.

The look Clarke shares with Monty is urgent.

“You think it’s them?” he asks.

Clarke doesn’t stick around to answer him. She marches away from their makeshift camp, heading in the direction Bellamy and his team are estimated to travel from. Her grip on the talkie is furious as she moves, eyes scanning the trees, ears straining to make out what the person on the other end of the line is saying. Faintly, Clarke hears Monty call out for her to wait. She doesn’t stop, though. Not until Miller’s voice breaks through, making Clarke’s heart punch against her chest.

“Miller to Base 1. Can you hear me? FUCK. Can you hear me?  _Shit_.”

Clarke bristles at the frightened tone of his voice. “Miller?” she breathes. “Go ahead.”

“ _Clarke_. Man. Shit. Something is happe-” Static rises and falls as he speaks, drowning out his voice. Clarke can only catch snippets of what he’s saying. 

“-really fucking- “ 

Static.

“-need medical-”

 Static.

“-Bellamy-”

Cold sweeps across Clarke’s skin, seizing her heart, freezing her to the spot. She should have realized something was wrong as soon as Miller contacted instead of Bellamy. She should have realized something was wrong as soon as her radio jumped one day too early.

As quickly as she was debilitated with fear, Clarke is moving again, calculating their next move.

“What are your coordinates, Miller?”

“Uh, 40 No-′” static, “95 degrees West.”

“40 North, 95 West?

“Yes. _Hurry_ , Clarke.”

This time, the crack she hears is not from the talkie but in Miller’s voice. It sends a fresh wave of panic washing over her.

“We’re on our way,” she promises. “Clear.”

It should have taken Clarke and the others at least three hours to move from their camp to the coordinates Miller gave her, but fear is a funny thing. It doesn’t just get your heart racing; it gets your feet racing too.

It takes them an hour and forty minutes to get to them.

What they find is not what Clarke expected to see.

The air is thick with forest and body odor and bile. There is no blood, or bone, or mutilated corpses; no sign of an attack by rogue grounders or any other earthly threat. There is only her people – Arkadians, Grounders – collapsed in the dirt, groaning, panting. 

Begging for it to end.

Thrown by the scene, Clarke scans the fallen for inky curls and freckled skin in a daze. She spots Miller first, though. His legs have given out and he’s sweating profusely, back pressed to Brian’s chest. Clarke hurries to him.

When Brian sees her, he releases a shaky whimper. Miller’s head lolls against his shoulder with the movement. “Thank God,” he sighs.

“What happened?” Clarke drops to her knees, taking Miller’s clammy face in her hands. The heat radiating from his skin makes her hands sweat.

Brian chokes out his words. “I don’t know,” he tells her. “They - they were all fine, and then they started throwing up, passing out. I think someone had a fucking seizure. I don’t - I don’t know-”

Clarke shines her flashlight in Miller’s eyes. His pupils are responsive. She checks his pulse - accelerated. 

“You’re okay?” she asks Brian.

He nods. “Not everyone is like this.”

Fleetingly, Clarke prays Bellamy is one of the lucky ones.

Miller moans into the crook of Brian’s neck.

“Do you know what could have done this?” asks Clarke

Raising a hand to hold Miller steady, Brian shrugs. “I don’t think it’s our rations,” he says. “We stopped for fresh water earlier?”

A.L.I.E.’s words from the City of Light echo in her ear. _There will be no drinkable water._

A sick unease twists in Clarke’s stomach. Wasn’t the black rain supposed to come before the poisoned water? Had it come to this area before they had? Is it beginning already? The end?

She rests the back of her hand against Miller’s burning forehead “Whatever this is, he’s sweating it out,” she tells Brian. “He should be okay.”

Reassurance is the most she can give without any real medicine on hand. She would tell Brian to keep Miller hydrated, but if Clarke’s suspicions are correct and water is what brought this on to begin with, it seems wise to steer clear of it for now.

“Bellamy is over there.” Brian jerks his head to a point behind Clarke, and she almost falls over in her haste to turn around. She sees him then, propped up against the trunk of a tree. His rifle is limp in his hands but he’s holding on. That’s all Clarke needs to see to know he’s still here. “He’s not in good shape, Clarke.”

The air whooshes from her lungs, and she’s by his side before she even realizes she’s moved.

It’s a dream and a nightmare at once to see Bellamy again. Tiny beads of sweat trickle from his temple, cling to his chin. His damp hair is plastered in clumps to his forehead. The brown of his skin has turned gray, dimming the light from his constellations of freckles. With half lidded eyes, Bellamy gazes up at her, sluggish. He looks worse for wear than when they bled with hemorrhagic fever. But he’s alive.

He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

“Shit,” he slurs. “I’m dead.”

Shaking her head, Clarke pushes the hair away from his face.“Not dead,” she says. “Just sick.”

A shiver runs through his body and Bellamy quakes with it. “Hallucinating,” he insists with a chatter.

“Don’t think so.” 

Like with Miller, Clarke checks his vitals, but slower this time. She lets her fingers trail along the inside of his wrist after feeling for his thready pulse. She cradles his face, caresses his cheek, when she tests his pupils’ light reflex. She substitutes a hand with her lips pressed firmly against his freezing forehead.

“Then how are you here?” Bellamy garbles against her collarbone.

“Miller.”

“Told you he was good for something.”

Gently, Clarke cradles his head against her chest. She presses the hint of a smile into his hair. “You did.”

His body heaves against hers after a minute, and Clarke pulls back just enough so Bellamy can vomit up nothing to his right. She slides a soothing hand along his spine until he finishes and sags against the tree once more.

Discreetly, so she won’t have to share with anyone else, Clarke pulls her canteen of drinkable water from her backpack. She raises it to Bellamy’s mouth. The water dribbles onto his colorless, cracked lips at first, wetting them before spilling down his chin. Eventually though, he begins to work his jaw, tongue poking out to lick at the droplets.

“That’s good. Drink, Bellamy.”

He gets a few mouthfuls down before there’s a commotion somewhere to Clarke’s left. Her team, all healthy, is scattered around, assisting whoever they can, but now a handful of them run over to one of Bellamy’s, who is thrashing wildly, foaming from the mouth.

Clarke leaves her water with Bellamy and runs toward the action to help.

The girl she finds is young, only sixteen, and she’s the first of many who die before nightfall. By the time the moon is settled luminous in the sky, almost a quarter of the group Bellamy started the mission with have passed.

When Clarke has given The Strong instructions, set up a shanty area to treat the ill, done all she knows she can possibly do, she returns to Bellamy. He hasn’t left the foot of the tree since she found him. His rifle is at his side now, right next to her canteen that’s fallen, emptied on the ground. She kneels in front of him. She rechecks his vitals. She doesn’t like what she sees, but there’s nothing else she can do.

Bellamy, drained of everything, reaches for her hand. It feels like the stop to something. Like acceptance.

If this is how it ends, Clarke has to tell him.

She has to remind him that he’s not bad. He’s human. That everything he’s done, he’s needed to do. That he’s made mistakes, shed blood, taken lives. But he also worked his ass off to keep one hundred delinquents alive, risked his life for his friends, for _strangers_ , loved fiercely and stupidly and with his entire bleeding heart.

She has to tell him she’s sorry, again, because she can never say it enough even though, always, she’s forgiven.

She has to remind him that he’s forgiven too.

She has to tell him about the elderly Grounder couple she saw during her walkabout. How Clarke sat high on a branch and looked down on them as they ate lunch together by a stream. How the old woman went on so seriously about something incredibly trivial. The way the old man listened intently, with a smile, and brushed her hair behind her ear when it fell into her eyes. How the first person Clarke thought of when the old woman pressed a kiss to his hand was Bellamy.

She has to tell him.

“Bellamy.”

He blinks at her so she knows he can hear.

Despite the chill of his skin, there’s something inexplicably warm about him in this moment. The fight has left his body, and all that’s left is peace. It’s otherworldly, the glow he emits. It’s _okay_.

“Bellamy, I - I -” Tears well in her eyes, clouding her vision. All he is now is a blur of a man. 

The words are stuck in her throat. She can’t say them. Her body won’t let her.

The problem is, she’s been here before. Twice. Grasping onto someone she’s given her heart to, offering them “I love you’s” as parting tokens from the Earth. Goodbyes. 

Clarke doesn’t want to say goodbye to Bellamy. She isn’t ready.

If this is when it ends though, Bellamy deserves to know.

Voice raw, a whine, she croaks “Bellamy, I lo-”

“Clarke,” he interrupts. His eyes close, pained, then open again to pierce her. “Please,” he begs, “don’t say anything you wouldn’t say if I weren’t dying.”

The air around them stills. All she can hear is blood rushing in her ears. All she can feel is Bellamy’s hand, heavy in her own. It occurs to Clarke that if she admitted her feelings now, last minute, when all hope is lost, he would never believe her. The realization wracks her with unbridled guilt.

Bellamy recognizes the emotions flickering across her face before she can hide them. He shakes his head, just barely, and opens his arms for her to crawl into. She does.

The last words he says to her before they’re carried away by the night: “Just stay.”

*

In the morning, Clarke wakes up to a nose bumping against her temple, rousing her from sleep. Her eyes are raw from crying, her tongue cotton in her mouth.

She remembers with a start that Bellamy laid by her side last night, dying.

Though somehow, impatiently, his voice is grumbling strongly in her ear. “Get up.”

Scrambling to her knees, Clarke skitters away from him, only to make sure he’s real, alive. She falls hard on her bottom when she sees that he is.

There are dark circles under his eyes and his skin is coated with sweat and grime. Color has returned to his cheeks though, and his eyes are fully open and bright.

“I thought- I thought you were-”

“Nah.” The smile he gives her is lazy and rich. “Can’t get rid of me that easy.”

There’s no point then in keeping herself at a distance any longer. Clarke lunges forward, careening on her knees, and captures Bellamy in a mighty embrace.

“There’s no way. The water. It’s not drinkable. You shouldn’t be-”

“It wasn’t the water that made us sick.”

Clarke pulls back just enough to look him in the eyes. “But Brian said…”

“Brian forgot we ate some weird fucking berries for breakfast. Poisonous, according to Monty. And Jasper checked out the water just to make sure it’s safe. It’s fine.” Bellamy’s breath gusts across her lips at that. Clarke exhales a shuddering sigh. He tucks a stray curl behind her ear, so gently, and Clarke feels her chest crack open when his tender eyes meet hers. “I’m fine.”

* * *

 

 

The first drops of rain fall like ink from the tip of a pen. They hit the shoulder of Bellamy’s jacket, then the skin beneath his eye.

He doesn’t think twice about it. It’s Earth. It rains. And, after four months, they just eliminated the last nuclear power plant they were in charge of, so it’s safe to assume they’re in the clear. A little drizzle is welcome at this point.

“What’s this?” Walking beside him, Clarke reaches up to tap Bellamy’s jaw. Her fingers linger on his face even as he glances down at her.

“What’s what?” he asks.

Clarke comes to a halt, stopping Bellamy with her. Cautiously, she reaches up to wipe away the speck of rain that landed on his cheek. The tip of her finger is stained black when she pulls away.

Dread fills the space between them.

It’s starting.

“How much farther until we reach the cave?” asks Bellamy. His voice is urgent, low so only she can hear.

“About seven miles,” Clarke says. “A little less than two hours if we move fast.”

“Let’s do that then.”

All business, Clarke nods, then makes her way to the head of their convoy to guide the way.

“LISTEN UP!” shouts Bellamy. Everyone but Clarke stops to listen. “We’re gonna have to pick up the pace. Weather is looking worse than we anticipated.”

There’s a chorus of mumbles and groans, but everyone follows his lead, no questions asked.

Bellamy turns his face to the sky. What landed on him before were only warning drops. The clouds rolling in now are sinister, obsidian.

Jasper sidles up beside him, eyes following Bellamy’s. “That doesn’t look good,” he comments.

Bellamy frowns. “Move it, Jasper.”

They head east, the same direction as the menacing clouds, but like Bellamy told them to, his people move faster. Jasper predicts that at their rate, they’ll make it to the cave just in time to beat the toxic rain.

And they do. They even have an hour to cover the cave’s mouth by tying their tents across it so that when it finally begins to pour, they’re shielded from the onslaught. With only the pattering of rain to hear, you can even pretend it’s a regular storm, though Bellamy decides it’s best not to. 

He kicked the habit of fooling himself a long time ago.

The downpour rages late into the night. With no end to the bad weather in sight, the others begin to unroll their sleeping bags and dim their electric lanterns. Clarke, of course, is not one of them. Near their quavering tarp, she sits on top of her bag, head against the cave wall, staring up at nothing.

“You shouldn’t be so close to that thing,” advises Bellamy. “If it comes down…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. They both know what will happen if their tents fail to secure them.

Eyes forlorn, Clarke focuses on the spot of skin below Bellamy’s lashes where the ugly drop landed hours ago. The area has been burning him on and off, but since mirrors aren’t easy to come by on the ground, he hasn’t been able to check out the damage.

“You’re burnt,” Clarke informs him.

Bellamy shrugs, taking a seat beside her. “What else is new?”

Enveloped by the storm, they sit together silently for a few heavy minutes, Clarke staring off into the distance, Bellamy focusing on the lantern at their feet. He knows they’re both thinking the same thing - they’re screwed.

After doing everything right, after risking their lives _again_ , they were still too late. The rain is black and they won’t be able to drink fresh water, and in two months time, the entire human race will be eviscerated. 

It’s done.

“It was all for nothing.” Bellamy looks away from their light, studies Clarke’s profile as her jaw gnashes violently. “Everything we’ve done,” she seethes. “None of it was worth it.”

“Clarke-”

“We should have just died on the Ark.” She turns to him with her whole body. “All the things we did to survive…” her voice is just above a whisper, “and everyone is going to die anyway.”

Typically, Bellamy is not an optimist. For Clarke though, he pretends to be.

“There’s still that four percent. It’s out there somewhere,” he reminds her. He holds her gaze with his faux sure one. “It’s not over yet.”

They both know it’s a fucking long shot. Still, Clarke doesn’t argue with him. They’re crazy to even consider the idea that they can reach salvation at this point, but they have never been known to give up so easily. Even if prophetic rain has virtually signed their death certificates, Bellamy and Clarke will fight tooth and nail to cheat the end.

They always have. That’s what they do.

With such tenderness it hurts, Clarke slowly slides her fingers through his.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t pull the switch,” she confesses, “in the City of Light.”

Bellamy grunts. “We’d still die.”

“Our minds wouldn’t,” she counters. “We could have lived forever.”

“That wouldn’t have been living, Clarke.”

Squeezing his hand in hers, she nods.

A vicious gust of wind rattles the tarp, howling angrily through the trees. Clarke breathes with it, quickly in, leisurely out. Bellamy can hear the cogs turning in her head.

“In Polis, before A.L.I.E. used my mom against me,” she begins. Bellamy feels her fingers clench around his. Her next words are spoken haltingly, deliberate, “she was going to use you.”

Bellamy’s heart stutters in his chest. It jumps up, then rattles down, then shuffles side to side uncertainly. His mind takes longer to react.

It’s not news to Bellamy that he’s important to Clarke. _Everyone_ is important to Clarke. But he’s not so willfully blind that he can ignore he’s of some exceptional significance to her. He would have told you differently four months ago, but since then, Clarke has gone above and beyond to express that he means something _more_ to her. Bellamy has just never been sure what _more_ is. It’s definitely not enough for A.L.I.E. to confuse him with the woman who gave Clarke life.

“That doesn’t make sense,” he reckons.

The smile that graces her lips is small and bitter. “It does.”

Deep down, Bellamy knows this is a confession of sorts. Clarke is gearing up to tell him something that will reshape their entire relationship all over again. She’s always had a nasty habit of springing her feelings on him unexpectedly.

“I was going to let A.L.I.E. kill my mom to save us. There was no other option,” she presses on, “but if she used you,” Clarke drags their hands, still entwined, to her chest. “I don’t know that I could have done the same thing.”

Her eyes bore into him, gaze unwavering, begging him to understand. His chest collapses when he finally does, and oxygen escapes him.

He grins.

It should worry Bellamy that Clarke is sitting here, clinging to him, admitting she would sacrifice the rest of humanity to protect him - but it doesn’t. Clarke is a universe of things, but selfish has never truly been one of them. She would not risk mankind for one person, not even if she believes she would. She is not purely good or consistently right, but if there is one thing Bellamy is sure of, it’s that Clarke Griffin will always, inexorably, save humanity. At the expense of her own. At the expense of his life. At any cost.

Although it does ignite a guilty spark of hope in Bellamy to learn if there ever could be an exception, it would be him. She’s his weakness too, after all, right next to Octavia. But the difference between him and Clarke is that he would never even hesitate.

Bellamy would end the entire world for her.

She has made his heart apocalyptic.

“Why are you smiling?” she snaps. “I just told you I have an Achilles’s heel.”

“Yeah,” he smirks, “it’s me.”

Clarke glares daggers at him. She untangles their hands and drops his to the ground. “Forget I said anything, Bellamy.”

When she reaches to turn her lantern off, putting the light out on their conversation, Bellamy places his hand against her jaw, guiding her face back to him.

“Hey, Clarke, hold on. I’m sorry.”

Body sagging, she continues to glower, but settles her weight into his palm.

“I smiled because I know better,” he tells her. “You would never put me before anyone else.” His thumb brushes across the apple of her cheek. She stains pink beneath his touch. “You would do whatever you’d have to to keep our people safe. That’s who you are.”

“No,” she persists, “I’m not sure anymore-”

“ _I’m_ sure.” Bellamy’s hand slides across her skin. It slinks behind her hair to cup her neck, to smooth his thumb across its softness. “ _That’s_ who you are. I’m sure, Clarke.”

Unbelievably, Bellamy’s belief in her continues to be enough.

She sucks in an aching breath, and Bellamy is entranced by the stretch of her flesh against his hand. “You understand what I’m telling you though, right?” Clarke asks him. “You know, Bellamy.”

It surprises him to realize he does.

He matters to her. Not a shocker. Bellamy matters to a lot of people in a lot of ways.

But he matters to Clarke the most, in every way imaginable. 

For the first time, Bellamy allows himself to pull her into the circle of his arms. Her face burrows into his chest, his nose buried in her hair. They’ve done this a hundred times before, but only now does it seem like the start of something new. He sinks into the feeling.

The sound of rain against their shoddy shield turns from a pounding to a patter. The soft whistle of the wind balms their wounds. For the shortest of seconds, Bellamy imagines the woods outside this cave are crystalline, dripping with possibility instead of death. He imagines pulling back the tarp and breathing, easy, like he never has before. There’s a four percent chance they can have that. And they will someday. He knows it.

Bellamy and Clarke are going to save the world.

Then, if she’ll let him, he’ll give it to her.

* * *

  
Clarke is cross legged on the second level of the dropship when he finds her.

She’s been here for hours now, running her fingers across rusted metal, raking her eyes over wires and knobs. Blood stains the floor that she sits on, painting the history of their first months on the ground. She scrapes her nail against flaking copper and recalls the days she spent rescuing Jasper. Another stain, and Clarke grimaces at the memory of whipping Lincoln crimson. Finn’s blood isn’t up here with the rest; Clarke pulled the knife from his chest on the level below, a lifetime ago.

Heavy footfall beneath her interrupts the chirping of birds and the whisper of a breeze. Clarke recognizes the pattern of Bellamy’s steps eerily fast. When she hears him stop, she eases to her feet and climbs down the hatch to meet him.

His back is to her when she hops from the ladder. She’s positive he knew she was here before he arrived, but the sound of her boots hitting the ground startles him nonetheless. Bellamy turns around to face her, expression vulnerable, and Clarke finds herself fresh from space, warning a guard that the air could be toxic. The irony doesn’t miss her.

But look how far they’ve come.

They share a moment in the quiet, where their eyes hold each other steady, their first encounter fleeting across their minds.

“I guess I shouldn’t have opened the dropship door, huh?” he jokes.

Clarke tucks her smile into the collar of her shirt. His humor is morbid, sure, but so is everything else on the ground. Some traumas can only be remedied with a laugh - a lesson they never taught in Earth Skills.

“Well, we’re not dead yet,” Clarke replies, and it earns her a cheeky smirk.

The flat of Bellamy’s hand runs along the lever he pulled what seems like eons ago before falling back to his side. Clarke has pulled so many goddamn levers during her months on Earth, each time causing destruction, that she almost forgot Bellamy was the one to do it first, opening the door to life yet uncorrupted.

“We head to the oil rig early tomorrow,” Bellamy reminds her. “We should get back to Arkadia, get some rest.”

Clarke nods, and she follows him out of the dropship, into the light. Side by side, they leave their first home on Earth for the second time. Neither of them gambles looking back.

The sun is setting just above the canopy of the trees now, coloring the sky pink and orange. Inside the dropship, Clarke hadn’t realized how late it was getting. She feels just the tiniest bit bad that Bellamy had to go and fetch her before dark. Now he’s walking her home, wasting time he could be spending preparing for their journey tomorrow, or sleeping. He’s right about needing rest; it will definitely be appreciated in the morning.

Because it turns out, Bellamy’s optimism was warranted in the cave the other day. By the time they led their combined teams back to Arkadia, Clarke’s mother, Kane, King Roan, and Luna were already making plans to migrate to the last habitable stretch of Earth, pinpointed by the genius that is Raven. 

Salvation is on a completely different continent. Somewhere freezing and alone, where the spellbinding aurora waltzes across the atmosphere. Roan describes it as the point where land touches sky.

Clarke thinks that sounds pretty fitting.

It will take them at least a week to reach their new home by Luna’s ancient, decrepit cruise ships. The timing works out nicely considering they’d be charred to a crisp if they were to leave any later. The sooner they escape this hell, the better.

Though, Clarke must admit, there’s not nearly enough time in the world for how exhaustively she wishes to bid this place a proper goodbye. A lot has happened here, in the ruins of Virginia. Most of it has been catastrophic. But not all of it was bad.

“Remember this?” Bellamy pushes away low hanging branches dressed with dark, earthy leaves. He pauses at the base of a beech tree. When Clarke stops beside him, she trails her fingers along the bark, letting the husk scrape her fingertip.

The tree looks the same as it did when she and Bellamy collapsed beneath it a year ago, coming down from a high with Dax dead at their feet. The only thing missing is the third party’s corpse.

“Another bad day,” Clarke remembers. It was their first murder committed together, the start to a long line of many.

Bellamy hums. “But the night ended okay.”

Clarke flashes back to opened hearts against this trunk; to tears, admissions, the turning of a tide. She feels the blessing and burden of guns strapped across her back afterward, feels her words of warning to the delinquents still fresh off her lips. Most vivid of all is the memory of Bellamy’s smile in front of Jaha, earnest and charmed as Clarke made it clear she was on his side.

She hasn’t been anywhere else since.

No, Clarke supposes. The night was okay indeed.

Bashful suddenly, Bellamy raps his knuckles against the trunk. “Should probably keep moving,” he says, and makes to walk away.

“Bellamy,” Clarke stops him.

He faces her, unassuming. “Yeah?”

Clarke isn’t sure what to say, though there is an abundance of things she should. She has a way with words, the same as Bellamy, though hers appeal more to the mind than anything else. Bellamy’s words always manage to cut through muscle and bone and shoot straight through the heart; optimal for expressing feelings and rousing emotion, a technique she’ll never firmly grasp. No matter how much she wants to, Clarke can never move Bellamy the way he can move the world.

“Thank you,” she ends up saying.

Brows drawn together, he watches her, confused. “For what?”

Clarke shrugs a shoulder, all of a sudden too conscious of her body. “For not leaving that day at the bunker.” She focuses hard on his adam’s apple, bobbing when he swallows. “For sticking with me. For caring.” 

Hearing so little is still overwhelming for him. All she’s done is state the obvious and, embarrassed, he diverts his attention to his shuffling feet.

“For everything.”

Bellamy nods to acknowledge he hears her.

“You never had to,” Clarke continues, “and I don’t know why you did… but I’m glad.”

At this, he lifts his head. He pins her with his gaze. “You know why I did.”

Her heart trips in her chest.

The tragedy is, she does know. Has known for a while. On a subconscious level, Clarke has always been aware of how much Bellamy truly cares for her. His feelings could possibly measure up to her own, unconditional and all encompassing. 

But the people Clarke loves and who love her in return die. Her father, Wells, Finn, Lexa. All the people who shaped and changed her world.

And what Bellamy is to Clarke is something no one else can equate to. He’s not her parent, not her lover, and something more than an old friend. He’s a warm blanket in winter, a cool spring in blazing heat. He’s there to knock her down a peg, to fight her fire with his own. The bad days, he makes bearable, and the good days, he makes brighter. Clarke craves his presence like oxygen. When he’s gone, she misses him like a limb. He’s her worst enemy. He’s her best friend. He fills every piece of her in a way she never knew a person could.

Bellamy Blake is Clarke Griffin’s entire heart.

So how could she ever risk losing him?

_No-_

How could she could keep him at bay?

Tears sting Clarke’s eyes when she realizes how foolish she’s been. For too long, he’s scared her. For too long, she’s feared her love would take him away. But the thing is nothing, not even death, ever could. 

“Bellamy.” This time, when she says it, it’s not because it’s her last chance. It’s not because he’s being floated, or she’s showing him mercy, or he’s dying slowly in her arms. She says it because she doesn’t have to. Because he’s different than the rest. Because he’s Bellamy, and she’s Clarke, and love is not their end, but their beginning. “I love you.”

A breeze blows. Leaves bristle. Hearts beat. The last rays of sunlight break through the trees, cloaking Bellamy in a warm glow. The earth holds its breath.

“Clarke…”

She waits for him to say more, but the words don’t come. For the first time in a long time, Bellamy is speechless.

So they don’t speak. Instead, Clarke takes the smallest of steps, inching into his space. Bellamy does the same. When they’re chest to chest, he reaches for her face on instinct, cradling her head in his hands. Clarke’s staggering breath sighs against his skin. Her hands trail over his chest, his shoulders, disappear behind his neck. 

Their eyes are connected, hearts pumping in sync.  _I live_ , they sing. _I love._

Clarke kisses Bellamy below the setting sun, under the tree where they first bared their souls. There are no tears this time; no death, no blood. Just their lips moving in tandem, with tenderness, surety. It’s a promise of tomorrow, of a future; of the ships they’ll sail, and the aurora; of a life that is more than just surviving.

They’re forced to part when reality hits and matching grins invade their moment. Clarke would kiss Bellamy until the end of time, but she’ll settle for feeling the press of his smile against hers any day.

“I love you too.” Bellamy breathes the words across her lips. They’re warmer than the brush of the sun. “It’s the easiest thing on earth to do.”

They stay tangled beneath the shade of the tree until dusk fades into night, learning each other new. Being with Bellamy is the most alive Clarke has felt in years. It’s the most peace she has ever had on the ground. 

It’s more than either of them could ask for.

Bellamy and Clarke, together with love, looking forward to tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Congrats on trudging through this one. All the kudos to you.  
> What'd you think? Lmk!  
> Follow me on tumblr @bllrke for more. <3


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